I’ve been poking at some horror lately, with kind of mixed results. I’m admittedly hard to creep out, especially by writing – though it has happened. The Haunting of Hill House didn’t make me jump, but I couldn’t look away, either. I was drawn to it because Jeffery Cranor on Random Number Generator Horror Podcast Number 9 praised the first paragraph of the novel. When a writer I respect remembers a particular paragraph from a novel, it seems worth a look.
It is a remarkable paragraph, but not just because it’s a sculpted piece of prose. It acts as the keystone that makes the rest of the novel the eerie mystery driven by the characters drawn into Hill House that it is. It sets the tone and rhythms of the environment that these characters are going into. They will make their own rhythms and they will combine into different combinations, but they are all riding that first paragraph’s beats. It basically does the work of the prologue to Church of Dead Girls in one paragraph. Remarkable.
None of that happens without Jackson structuring everything that goes on, and I love seeing that kind of stuff, but she does it so deftly that it only emerges on reflection. While I was reading it, it was a spooky story with interesting characters.
When I read The Turn of the Screw, I found the subtext inaccessible. I found the things left unsaid by Jackson much easier to hear. That may be because she’s writing closer in time than James, but I don’t think so.
Basically I found Haunting gripping, spooky, character driven, and fun to think about.
Strongly recommended.